Catastrophe for the Iraqi people

Jeremy Scahill, who has featured on this blog before, has written about what 7 years of the war in Iraq has produced. Scahill argues that Iraq:

".... is as unstable as it has been. They (Iraqi's) can't form a government. The vast majority of people don't have consistent access to pottable water, to electricity, to gasoline in one of the richest, oil richest countries in the world.... It is a disaster and a humanitarian catastrophe."

Scahill writes that the situation for the Iraqi people is so bad that many (including those who hated Saddam Hussein) are saying that life was better under Hussein. Violence is an all time high, with July being the deadliest month for civilian casualties in over a year.

Scahill points out that Obama's announcement that US troops will be withdrawn by the end of the month is a sham. The Obama administration and the Pentagon are in fact rapidly beefing up private military forces in Iraq and have sought a massive cash injection from Congress to ramp up the number of private military contractors. The numbers of US military will increase substantially. They will be private para- military forces paid for by the US taxpayer

The occupation is being re branded. Obama is presiding over a radical expansion of the use of private US military companies like Blackwater and private soldiers in Iraq. Scahill points out that Obama and Hillary Clinton are looking to have between 6,000 and 7,000 private security operatives in Iraq.

The US embassy in Iraq is now the largest embassy of any country in the history of civilization. It is the size of eighty football fields and is larger than the Vatican City in Rome.